I hereby officially declare Neil Young the first reality star. With the release of the Neil Young Archive you are about to discover the complete life of an artist captured from within.
But don’t let me scare you off with that reality word. This is not the tacky Ozzy Osbourne or Gene Simmons reputation demolition. This is a thorough insight into the creation of the music of one of the most remarkable artists of our time, Neil Young. I call Neil the "original reality star" because he fans, this is the reality of his musical career.And now the news you have been waiting for, the release date. June 2 folks, June 2 is the officially day that the 10 DVD Neil Young Archive biography set will be released.
Young’s business partner Elliot Roberts and Shakey Pictures head L.A. Johnson demoed the upcoming release at the Austin Music Hall during the SXSW.
I want to tell you, this project is so far ahead of what anyone has done before that it will become the benchmark for capturing an artists career.
We’ve had the greatest hits album. We’ve had the compilation videos but Neil Young’s Archive is the ultimate document. It captures a life is sound and vision complimented with text and graphics.
You interact with Neil Young Archives via a chronological timeline starting in 1963 with ‘Aurora’, the very first song Young ever recorded. It was released by his then band The Squires. It was their one and only release.
“This is not a box-set, it is a biography,” Elliot Roberts said. “It is his life. You get a look into an artist that you have never seen before.”
As an example of the glimpse into the private life of the artist, the interactive component even contain Young’s private letters to his parents when they were getting a divorce in the 60s.
You will see a remarkable video of Neil walking through (what I think was) Central Park around 1972 and a fan stopping him and asking him to play the guitar.
There is video footage of the recording of the Harvest album in the barn in Nashville capturing Young putting down ‘Alabama’.
The politically driven birth of ‘Ohio’ is also documented. “Ohio was written, recorded and released to radio within two weeks which was amazing back then,” Roberts said. “Radio was sympathetic to a song like Ohio then. There would be nowhere to take a song like Ohio now”.
There was remarkable foresight for this collection. Back in 1968, Young started collecting everything about his life and recruited Joel Bernstein to store and catalogue the content. “Every show was recorded on the tape of the time, like cassette or filmed from then,” Roberts said.
We have been hearing about this project for decades. The first I heard about it was around 20 years ago when there was talk of a ‘Decade 2’. This is what that has evolved to.
With Blu-ray, Young finally found a format he is comfortable with. ‘Neil’s motto is ‘Quality whether you want it or not’,” Elliot half-joked. For Young, this is serious stuff. “When you get into your 60’s you start to think of your legacy and how it will be remembered,” he said.
I asked Elliot when will the upcoming Archive series catch up with real-time. “Not in our life-time. And I mean that literally,” he said.
Actually I’m sure if we all stay healthy and exercise we will survive long enough to see the next few editions. Volume two from 1975 will be released in 2 to 3 years and L.A. Johnson said that over the next 10 years they expect to have four decades covered.
Watching the decade captured in volume 1 from start to finish is around 30 hours.
Without a doubt, this is by far the most amazing collection of an artists work EVER.
The Archives will be released as a 10 disc Blu-Ray box, a 10 DVD set and an 8 CD/2DVD audio set featuring the unreleased movie ‘Journey Through The Past’.
The Blu-ray will retail for $299. The DVD for $199 and the CD box $99.
